Eight Detectives by Alex Pavesi

Eight Detectives by Alex Pavesi
UK Publication: August 2020
Reviewed by: Book Worm
Rating: [★★★]

This ARC was provided by Penguin UK (via NetGalley) in exchange for an honest review.

Synopsis from Goodreads: There are rules for murder mysteries. There must be a victim. A suspect. A detective. The rest is just shuffling the sequence. Expanding the permutations. Grant McAllister, a professor of mathematics, once sat down and worked them all out – calculating the different orders and possibilities of a mystery into seven perfect detective stories he quietly published. But that was thirty years ago. Now Grant lives in seclusion on a remote Mediterranean island, counting the rest of his days.

Until Julia Hart, a sharp, ambitious editor knocks on his door. Julia wishes to republish his book, and together they must revisit those old stories: an author hiding from his past, and an editor, keen to understand it.

But there are things in the stories that don’t add up. Inconsistencies left by Grant that a sharp-eyed editor begins to suspect are more than mistakes. They may be clues, and Julia finds herself with a mystery of her own to solve.

My Thoughts:  This book made me realise that the murder mystery is a book genre I have not actually really ventured into, some of the homages in this book I did recognise but I must confess that is mainly due to films to having heard about the story rather than having actually read it. I do feel the need to remedy and will probably dive into the classics of the genre at some point when my Netgalley list is back under control.

Onto the story itself I was glad that the narrator explained the clues in each story after the telling because as hard as I tried I really didn’t pick up on them myself, I am sure loads of people are now shouting at me “but how could you possibly miss XYZ” all I can say is I have no idea but I did.

I liked the mathematical framing of stories and how each story highlighted a specific mathematical principle including the central narration. I enjoyed each story despite having no clue “whodunit” however I did feel that the ending was a bit of a stretch despite the fact that the mathematics discussed still applied.

Who would like this? I would recommend this to fans of the murder mystery genre I am sure you will recognise a lot more than I did and will also be able to solve the mysteries along the way. I confess to being a rank amateur when it comes to this.

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